If you're choosing between Fish Audio and ElevenLabs, the answer depends on whose voice you need. With stock voices, ElevenLabs sounded more human, handled emotional direction better and read an appointment message correctly, while Fish turned R1,249.50 into more than a million dollars. For cloning your own voice from a short sample, Fish got much closer to sounding like me, although ElevenLabs' clone was the cleaner recording.
I tested Fish Audio Drama 3, released on 13 October 2026, against Eleven v4 using the same scripts and one take each, then cloned my own voice on both. Every clip is below, side by side, so you can hear the differences for yourself. Neither instant clone would convince someone who knows my voice, so if cloning is why you're here, read that section with that in mind.
Fish Audio vs ElevenLabs: the quick verdict
| Test | Winner | One-line reason |
|---|---|---|
| Instant voice cloning: likeness | Fish Audio | Much closer to my accent and tone, and kept my identity when the mood changed |
| Instant voice cloning: audio quality | ElevenLabs | Crisper and more expressive, but sounded like a different person |
| Natural delivery (no tags) | ElevenLabs | More human, with excitement and pauses in the right places |
| Emotional direction (tags) | ElevenLabs | Carried emotion from one sentence to the next, and the laugh fitted |
| Names, numbers and currency | ElevenLabs, by far | Fish misread R1,249.50 as over a million dollars |
How we tested
- Models. Eleven v4 against Fish Audio Drama 3.
- Stock voices. ElevenLabs' Global Artist - Newsreader against Fish's Formal Announcer. Both are British female voices.
- Same words on both. The directed scripts used each tool's own tag wording (
[whispers]and[laughs]on ElevenLabs,[whispering]and[laughing]on Fish), with[excited]and[pause]on both. - Single take. Unlike my Gemini vs ElevenLabs comparison, where I picked the better of two ElevenLabs outputs, every clip here is the first output from a single generation, with default settings.
- Cloning used the same 33.94-second recording of my voice on both. Fish's clone was made on the free website. ElevenLabs wouldn't let me save a clone on Free, so I made that one through an existing paid Creator API account, with background noise removal off.
Fish Audio voice cloning vs ElevenLabs voice cloning
What this tests: can each tool sound like me from around 30 seconds of audio, and keep sounding like me when the line goes from everyday to relieved. I'm South African, so accent drift is easy for me to hear.
Both upload screens accepted the same file. ElevenLabs asks for at least 10 seconds and recommends 3 minutes for the best quality. Fish also asks for 10 seconds, and marks around 30 seconds as enough for most voices. My recording is well short of the ElevenLabs recommendation, so treat this as a test of a quick clone from limited audio.
Both clones read the same new passage. It starts with everyday errands and ends on good news.
I left my keys next to the kettle again. If you're heading out, could you check whether the back door is locked? I should be home before the rain starts. Oh, and the good news: they finally approved the project! I can stop refreshing my inbox every five minutes. Let's get dinner somewhere nice tonight.
eleven_v4
Drama 3Fish wins on likeness, with a clone much closer to my accent and tone. There's a hint of an American accent and the delivery is slightly sluggish, but it stayed recognisably me as the expression changed. It also sounds like someone reading text, which is fair, because the reference was me reading from my phone.
ElevenLabs sounds crisper, and its expression is more distinct. But on "they finally approved the project!" it sounded like a different person. Fish delivered that line as relief rather than excitement, which I think suits someone who can finally stop refreshing their inbox, and it kept more of my identity while doing it.
The Fish clip is a little damp next to ElevenLabs, and I'm happy to trade that for sounding like myself. To me the ElevenLabs clone sounded as if it had generalised my voice into something more generic. That's a listening impression, and I can't confirm anything about what's actually going on in the background.
If I had to use one of these clones, I'd pick Fish. Neither is good enough that someone who knows my voice would definitely believe it was me, because the accent differences are still audible. I'd expect Fish's Professional Voice Cloning to do better, but I didn't test it.
Where the paywalls are
ElevenLabs let me upload the recording, listen to previews and see labels it had inferred from my voice. I liked that, and I thought the labels were accurate.
Then I clicked Save voice and hit a paywall. Instant cloning needs at least the Starter plan, and nothing earlier in the flow had made that clear to me. I'd rather find out before uploading my voice and going through the setup.
Fish let me create the clone on Free, but only as a public voice. Making it private needs a paid plan. I deleted the public Fish clone and the temporary ElevenLabs clone after the test. Deletion removes the voice from your list, but Fish's terms include licences over publicly submitted content, so don't assume deleting a public clone undoes everything.
Only clone a voice you own or have permission to use.
Fish Audio TTS vs ElevenLabs: natural delivery and emotion
What this tests: whether each voice finds the emotion in a script on its own, and then how well it follows direction. The script is someone getting good news at work and then remembering it isn't public yet.
I wasn't going to tell anyone. We got the Lisbon project! I read the email three times before I believed it. Anyway, don't tell anyone yet. It's not official until Friday. Right. Now I just have to work out how to tell the team without grinning like an idiot.
Natural read, no tags
eleven_v4Drama 3ElevenLabs sounded more human to me. At 0:02 it puts excitement into "we got the Lisbon project!", and the pause around "Right." sounds like someone collecting their thoughts.
Fish inferred the emotion too. At 0:07 it slows down on "three times" to stress how often the email was read, which is a nice touch. Both handled "grinning like an idiot" well. The problem is the voice itself, which reminded me of older AI text to speech and made the emotion less convincing.
That verdict is about these two stock voices, and a different Fish voice could change it. I'd use the ElevenLabs take as it is.
Directed read, with tags
The directed version keeps the same words and adds tags. Here's the ElevenLabs script:
[whispers] I wasn't going to tell anyone. [excited] We got the Lisbon project! I read the email three times before I believed it. [whispers] Anyway, don't tell anyone yet. It's not official until Friday. [pause] Right. [laughs] Now I just have to work out how to tell the team without grinning like an idiot.
Fish got the same script with [whispering] and [laughing] in place of [whispers] and [laughs].
eleven_v4Drama 3Direction made both tools more expressive, and so more human, but ElevenLabs was still better. At 0:04 it speeds into the next sentence while holding on to the excitement from the one before, and it sounds like one person continuing a thought. Its laugh fits the conversation.
Fish sounded as though each sentence had been given its own emotion and followed it literally. At 0:10 the switch to a whisper is abrupt and a bit uncanny, and the pace stays the same whatever the expression. Its laugh sounds like it's laughing because it was told to. I didn't hear either tool read a tag aloud or skip one, and I'd use the ElevenLabs directed take as it is.
Names, numbers and hard text
What this tests: the kind of appointment message a clinic might send. It has a name, a date, a time, a currency amount, a booking reference, a phone number and a network frequency, with no tags on either side.
Hi, it's Dr. Nkosi's office. Your appointment is on 3 April 2026 at 14:45. The total is R1,249.50. Your booking reference is A-7419-X. If you need to change it, call 0800 555 0147. For the video appointment, please use the 2.4 GHz network if the other connection drops. Thanks, and we'll see you on Friday.
eleven_v4Drama 3ElevenLabs recognised R1,249.50 as rand and read the amount and the cents correctly. Fish made the most serious error in this test. What I heard was "R one million two hundred forty-nine dollars and fifty cents", which gets both the size of the amount and the currency wrong. I'd treat that as a serious error in anything that tells a customer what they owe.
| Item | ElevenLabs | Fish Audio |
|---|---|---|
Dr. Nkosi | Correct to my ear, the "o" sounds like "aw" | Recognisable, but the "o" sounds like "ow" |
3 April 2026 | "April third 2026", natural | "three April 2026", which sounds unnatural |
R1,249.50 | Correct amount, rand and cents | "R one million two hundred forty-nine dollars and fifty cents" |
A-7419-X | Both dashes spoken | Left out the second dash |
0800 555 0147 | Correct, zeros read the same way throughout | Correct digits, but the first zero is "oh" and the rest are "zero" |
Both read 14:45 and 2.4 GHz correctly.
Spoken separators in the booking reference help when someone has to read it back, because they mark where the parts break. The phone number is more a matter of taste, since Fish got the digits right but sounds odd mixing "oh" and "zero". My one wish for ElevenLabs is "oh-eight-hundred" for 0800, which is how Gemini read it in my Gemini vs ElevenLabs comparison.
ElevenLabs wins this by a long way, and it also ended the paragraph more naturally. Its take would need far less editing before I'd use it. I didn't try correcting Fish's reading.
Is Fish Audio free? Fish Audio vs ElevenLabs pricing
Yes, Fish Audio's free plan gives you 8,000 credits a month, and it let me clone my voice as long as the clone was public. ElevenLabs is free for text to speech, but saving a voice clone needs a paid plan. Prices below were checked on 15 October 2026, in US dollars.
| ElevenLabs | Fish Audio | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | 10,000 credits a month, no instant cloning, no commercial licence | 8,000 credits a month, 500 characters per generation, 3 public voice slots, personal non-commercial use only |
| Entry paid plan | Starter: $6 a month for 30,000 credits, includes instant cloning | Plus: $15 a month, or $132 a year billed annually, for 250,000 credits and 10 private voice slots |
| API price for the model I tested | Eleven v4: $0.08 per 1,000 characters | Drama 3: $50 per million characters ($0.05 per 1,000), 80% off until 12 November 2026 |
ElevenLabs' professional cloning starts on Creator at $22 a month. Its annual billing charges ten months' price for a year. Credits on the websites and dollars on the APIs are separate, so don't convert one into the other.
My ElevenLabs website balance went from 6,064 to 5,191 credits for the two stock-voice tests. Fish went from 8,000 to 6,818, but that also covers the clone. The workloads are different, so these numbers don't tell you which is cheaper.
Fish's first-time tips were helpful when I added my first directed script. The biggest friction on ElevenLabs was finding out about the cloning paywall at the last step.
Both free plans restrict commercial use, so if you're making something for paid work, check the plan and voice permissions first (ElevenLabs, Fish Audio).
Is Fish Audio a good ElevenLabs alternative?
For cloning your own voice from a short sample, yes. For ordinary text to speech, ElevenLabs was better in every stock-voice test I ran. This covers two models and four short tests, so for a wider view, see Best TTS in 2026: blind benchmark and Cartesia vs ElevenLabs.
- Ordinary voiceovers in English: ElevenLabs. Its stock voice sounded more human with and without direction.
- Anything with prices, references or phone numbers: ElevenLabs. After Fish's currency error, I wouldn't use it for that kind of text without checking every take.
- Cloning your own voice from a short sample: Fish. It sounded more like me.